How To Build A Satisfying career
why do some people end up loving what they do, while so many others fail at this goal? Let's try to find answer to this question.
when it cames to career advice the most popular one is "Follow your passion". But let us find out whether this advice is useful or not.
The Passion Of Steve Jobs
In June 2005, Jobs gave a commencement speech at the Stanford Stadium to all the graduates, and somewhere about a third of his speech, Jobs spoke the following:
"You've got to find what you love....
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle".
Now most of the people interpreted it as "Follow your passion".
search the bookshelf on career guidance and you will find this passion hypothesis everywhere. Thousands of full time Bloggers, professional counselors, and self proclaimed gurus will tell you the same to follow your passion, which roughly translates in discovering your passion and then matching it with a job. "To be happy, you must follow your passion".
Do what Steve Jobs did, not what he said
Jobs wasn't particularly interested in either business or electronics as a student. He instead studied Western History and dabbled in Eastern Mysticism. He dropped out of Reed College in his first year, but remained on the campus for a while. Sleeping on floors and enjoying free meals at the local Hare Krishna Temple.
At one point he left his job at Atari for several months to make a mendicants' spiritual journey through India, and on returning home he began to train seriously at the nearly Los Altas Zen Centre.
Jobs was something of a conflicted young man, seeking spiritual enlightenment and dabbling in electronics only when it promised to earn him quick cash.
Jobs noticed that people were excited by the introduction of modern kit computers that enthusiasts could assemble at home.
Jobs shared this idea of designing such kit with Wozniak. The initial plan was to make he board for $25 apiece and sell them at $50. Jobs wanted to sell one hundred total, which after removing the costs of printing the board design, would leave them with a nice $100 profit. Neither of them left their jobs, it was a low-risk venture meant for their free time.
When jobs offered these boards for sale in a computer shop, they insisted that they wanted to buy fully assembled computers with $500 apiece and wanted fifty of them as soon as they could be delivered. Jobs took the opportunity and Apple computers was born.
Now from the above details, it becomes clear, if a young Steve Jobs had taken his own advice and decided to only persue work he loved, we would probably find him today as one of the Los Altos Zen Center's most popular teacher. But that's not the truth we know him as a visionary guy. Steve developed a passion for computers over time. Success caused passion in Jobs and not passion itself resulted in success.
What's wrong with the passion hypothesis?
1) Passion is rare.
In 2002, a research team lead by the Canadian psychologist Robert J. Vallerand conducted a questionnaire to a group of 539 Canadian university students. These students were asked two simple questions; whether they had any passion? And if so what are they?
These were the findings, 84% of the student survey identified as having a passion and the top five identified passions were , Dance, Hockey, Skiing, Reading and Swimming. Now these patients don't have much to offer when it comes to choosing a job. In fact less than 4% of total identified passions had any relation to work or education, with the remaining 96% describing hobby style interest such as sports and arts.
2) Passion is a side effect of mastery
Daniel Pink, gave a popular Ted talk titled, 'On the surprising science of motivation' on human motivation.
In this talk he talks about the three basic psychological needs to be intrinsically motivated for your work. These three basics were:
Working right trumps finding the right work.
If passions isn't the answer to our question, then what is?
There are two approaches to work;
I) The Passion mindset
II) The craftsman mindset
The passion mindset is based on what the world can give me so that I can be happy. The craftsman mindset focus on what I can contribute to this world so that I can make people happy. The craftsman mindset offers clarity while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambigious and unanswerable questions.
The Passion minset is flawed for two reasons:
1) It's based on a false premise. When you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperware of what you don't like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness.
2) second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the Passion mindset -"who am I?" And "what do i truly love?" - are essentially impossible to confirm and "do I love this?" Rarely reduces to a 'yes' or 'no' response and thus suddenly leaves you in a dellima.
This approach asks you to leave behind self-centred concerns about whether your job is "just right" and instead just put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good.
No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it - and the process won't be easy.
Be soo good at what you do, that they can't ignore you.
Now how do we get these traits in our working lives?
Now career Capital are the rare and valuable skills that form the foundation of work you love. When you have something which is rare and valuable especially skills that are rare and valuable then you can exchange it with the traits above mentioned.
How to acquire career Capital?
Deliberate practice is the term coined by K. Anders Ericsson, a famous psychologist. Deliberate practice refers to high concentration practice beyond one's comfort zone.
Deliberate practice requires discipline. Deliberate practice simply means devoting a set amount of your time on mastering a skill beyond your comfort zone.
The 10,000 Hour Rule
According to this Rule , you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become wold class in any chosen field.
To have a mission is to have a unifying focus for your career. It's more general than a specific job and can spend multiple positions. It provides an answer to the question, 'what should I do with my life?' Missions are powerful because they focus your energy towards a useful goal, and this in turn maximizes your impact on your world. A crucial factor in loving what you do. People who feel like their careers truly matter are more satisfied with their working lives and they are also more resistant to the strain of hard work. Staying up late to save your corporate litigation client a few extra million dollars can be draining, but staying up late to help cure an ancient disease can leave you more energized then when you started, perhaps even provide you the extra enthusiasm needed.
What happens when you try to build a career without career Capital?
At the age of 38, Lisa Feuer quit her career in Advertising and Marketing. Chafing under the constraints of Corporate life, she decided to give entrepreneurship a try. She took a 200 hour yoga instruction course, tapping a home equity loan to pay the $4,000 tution. With certificate in hand, she started Karma Kids yoga, a yoga practice focused on young children and pregnant women.
Great work required great courage but also skills of great (and real) value, when Feuer left her advertising career to start yoga Studio, not only she discarded the career capital acquired over many years in the marketing industry but she transitioned into an unrelated field where she had almost no Capital. Just a one month training program places Feuer preety near the bottom on the skill hierarchy of yoga.
As the recession hit in 2008, her business struggled. One of the gyms where she taught closed. Two classes she offered at a local Public High School were dropped. In 2009 she made only $15,000 for the year.
What happens when you have enough Career Capital?
Joe Duffy, like Feuet, worked in advertising and eventually began to chafe at the constraints of corporate life. Given that Duffy's original training was as an artist - he had entered the advertising industry as a technical illustrator only after he had a hard time making a living with the paintings.
Duffy, turns out to be from the craftsman mindset. Instead of fleeing the constraints of his current job he began acquiring the career capital he needed to by himself out of the constraints. His speciality become International logos and brand icons. As his ability grew so did his options, eventually he was hired away by the Minneapolis based Fallon McElligott agency, which allowed him to run his own subsidiary within the large organisation calling it Duffy Designs. His capital had brought him more autonomy.
After 20 years at Fallon McElligott, working on logos for the major companies such a Sony and Coca - Cola Duffy once again invested his capital to gain more autonomy, this time by starting his own 15 person shop. Calling it Duffy and partners. This entrepreneurial move contrasts sharply with Feuer's. Duffy started his own company with enough Career capital to immediately thrive. He was one of the world's best logo men and had a waiting list of clients.
The core idea is simple: to construct work you love, you must first build career capital by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the type of traits that define compelling careers.
Source; This whole concept of career building was borrowed from the book 'So Good They Can't ignore You' by Cal Newport.
At one point he left his job at Atari for several months to make a mendicants' spiritual journey through India, and on returning home he began to train seriously at the nearly Los Altas Zen Centre.
Jobs was something of a conflicted young man, seeking spiritual enlightenment and dabbling in electronics only when it promised to earn him quick cash.
Jobs noticed that people were excited by the introduction of modern kit computers that enthusiasts could assemble at home.
Jobs shared this idea of designing such kit with Wozniak. The initial plan was to make he board for $25 apiece and sell them at $50. Jobs wanted to sell one hundred total, which after removing the costs of printing the board design, would leave them with a nice $100 profit. Neither of them left their jobs, it was a low-risk venture meant for their free time.
When jobs offered these boards for sale in a computer shop, they insisted that they wanted to buy fully assembled computers with $500 apiece and wanted fifty of them as soon as they could be delivered. Jobs took the opportunity and Apple computers was born.
Now from the above details, it becomes clear, if a young Steve Jobs had taken his own advice and decided to only persue work he loved, we would probably find him today as one of the Los Altos Zen Center's most popular teacher. But that's not the truth we know him as a visionary guy. Steve developed a passion for computers over time. Success caused passion in Jobs and not passion itself resulted in success.
What's wrong with the passion hypothesis?
1) Passion is rare.
In 2002, a research team lead by the Canadian psychologist Robert J. Vallerand conducted a questionnaire to a group of 539 Canadian university students. These students were asked two simple questions; whether they had any passion? And if so what are they?
These were the findings, 84% of the student survey identified as having a passion and the top five identified passions were , Dance, Hockey, Skiing, Reading and Swimming. Now these patients don't have much to offer when it comes to choosing a job. In fact less than 4% of total identified passions had any relation to work or education, with the remaining 96% describing hobby style interest such as sports and arts.
2) Passion is a side effect of mastery
Daniel Pink, gave a popular Ted talk titled, 'On the surprising science of motivation' on human motivation.
In this talk he talks about the three basic psychological needs to be intrinsically motivated for your work. These three basics were:
- Autonomy : the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important.
- Competence : the feeling that you are good at want you do.
- Relatedness : the feeling that you are connected to other people.
Working right trumps finding the right work.
If passions isn't the answer to our question, then what is?
There are two approaches to work;
I) The Passion mindset
II) The craftsman mindset
The passion mindset is based on what the world can give me so that I can be happy. The craftsman mindset focus on what I can contribute to this world so that I can make people happy. The craftsman mindset offers clarity while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambigious and unanswerable questions.
The Passion minset is flawed for two reasons:
1) It's based on a false premise. When you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperware of what you don't like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness.
2) second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the Passion mindset -"who am I?" And "what do i truly love?" - are essentially impossible to confirm and "do I love this?" Rarely reduces to a 'yes' or 'no' response and thus suddenly leaves you in a dellima.
Adoption the craftsman mindset
No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it - and the process won't be easy.
Be soo good at what you do, that they can't ignore you.
Traits that define great work
- Creativity: your work should Ignite the creative person in you, it should challenge you to face difficult projects with creativity.
- Impact: your work should have an impact on other people's lives. From Apple II to the iPhone, Steve Jobs has changed the way we live in the digital age.
- Control: you should have control on what you do when you do and how you do it.
These three traits form the basics of work life satisfaction, no matter the nature of the work.
Now how do we get these traits in our working lives?
Career Capital
Now career Capital are the rare and valuable skills that form the foundation of work you love. When you have something which is rare and valuable especially skills that are rare and valuable then you can exchange it with the traits above mentioned.
How to acquire career Capital?
Deliberate practice
Deliberate practice is the term coined by K. Anders Ericsson, a famous psychologist. Deliberate practice refers to high concentration practice beyond one's comfort zone.
Deliberate practice requires discipline. Deliberate practice simply means devoting a set amount of your time on mastering a skill beyond your comfort zone.
The 10,000 Hour Rule
According to this Rule , you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become wold class in any chosen field.
The importance of mission
To have a mission is to have a unifying focus for your career. It's more general than a specific job and can spend multiple positions. It provides an answer to the question, 'what should I do with my life?' Missions are powerful because they focus your energy towards a useful goal, and this in turn maximizes your impact on your world. A crucial factor in loving what you do. People who feel like their careers truly matter are more satisfied with their working lives and they are also more resistant to the strain of hard work. Staying up late to save your corporate litigation client a few extra million dollars can be draining, but staying up late to help cure an ancient disease can leave you more energized then when you started, perhaps even provide you the extra enthusiasm needed.
What happens when you try to build a career without career Capital?
At the age of 38, Lisa Feuer quit her career in Advertising and Marketing. Chafing under the constraints of Corporate life, she decided to give entrepreneurship a try. She took a 200 hour yoga instruction course, tapping a home equity loan to pay the $4,000 tution. With certificate in hand, she started Karma Kids yoga, a yoga practice focused on young children and pregnant women.
Great work required great courage but also skills of great (and real) value, when Feuer left her advertising career to start yoga Studio, not only she discarded the career capital acquired over many years in the marketing industry but she transitioned into an unrelated field where she had almost no Capital. Just a one month training program places Feuer preety near the bottom on the skill hierarchy of yoga.
As the recession hit in 2008, her business struggled. One of the gyms where she taught closed. Two classes she offered at a local Public High School were dropped. In 2009 she made only $15,000 for the year.
What happens when you have enough Career Capital?
Joe Duffy, like Feuet, worked in advertising and eventually began to chafe at the constraints of corporate life. Given that Duffy's original training was as an artist - he had entered the advertising industry as a technical illustrator only after he had a hard time making a living with the paintings.
Duffy, turns out to be from the craftsman mindset. Instead of fleeing the constraints of his current job he began acquiring the career capital he needed to by himself out of the constraints. His speciality become International logos and brand icons. As his ability grew so did his options, eventually he was hired away by the Minneapolis based Fallon McElligott agency, which allowed him to run his own subsidiary within the large organisation calling it Duffy Designs. His capital had brought him more autonomy.
After 20 years at Fallon McElligott, working on logos for the major companies such a Sony and Coca - Cola Duffy once again invested his capital to gain more autonomy, this time by starting his own 15 person shop. Calling it Duffy and partners. This entrepreneurial move contrasts sharply with Feuer's. Duffy started his own company with enough Career capital to immediately thrive. He was one of the world's best logo men and had a waiting list of clients.
The core idea is simple: to construct work you love, you must first build career capital by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the type of traits that define compelling careers.
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Keep sharing; keep caring!
Source; This whole concept of career building was borrowed from the book 'So Good They Can't ignore You' by Cal Newport.
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